10:14 am | 24 November 2004 | the allegory of christmas

My children, come unto me, and I will tell you a holiday tale, for lo, I have experienced The Glory of Christmas. While ordinarily a staunch supporter of Anti-Pre-Christmas festivities, Pants had free tickets to the preview show (a $40 value!) and it seemed really imperative that we check it out. It's a legend in the Southland, and we felt hilarious even driving in.

Some background: the Crystal Cathedral is a freaky church complex, the main nave of which is made entirely of strut-supported glass panes, thousands of them, although their engineering lends less of a "crystalline" feel, and more of a "vaguely Star-trekkian industrial complex" one. Additionally, it's HUGE inside. I couldn't find any stats on the number of seats, but it was fully at least three football fields (and I was in marching band--I know this stuff).

So we go down there, and so great is the rush to get inside for good seats that I get totally plowed over by a pair of Asian aunties in spandex-cuffed two-pieces. Pants is all "come ON, people" and we make it inside. They have a basic stage with big semi-impressive set pieces, and then what looks like a runway or catwalk bisecting the main floor, with several sub-ramps up to those levels. The pageant is mostly just the whole birth-of-Jesus thing, although some severe revisionism is happening (um, Joseph and Mary's Jewish wedding? Joseph being totally stoked about Mary's pregnancy? The angel Gabriel looking like Barbie?), but that is totally secondary to the crazed garishness of the production.

First, and scariest: The angels. I tried to take surreptitious pictures of them, to share the terror among you, but it didn't work ('cause they're angels, duh). The angels are ladies in white diaphanous iridescent gowns that straight-up come swooping down across the inside of the cathedral on wires. The angels only face one direction and, after having made their decrees or whatever, get reeled back up and into the angel hidey-holes until they need next come terrify the masses. The angels are fucking scary and I did not like them. One was bad enough, but at some "joyous" point there were fully eight angels (one of them CAME OUT FROM BEHIND A TREE ambush-style) and they were bobbing up and down in wind and light like really creepy jellyfish, or something, and it honest-to-God gave me the total creeps.

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Left: Angels?---------------------------- Right: Angels.

Second: Live animals. The phrase "animal acts," as used on the website, is misleading, since the animals are only acting like themselves. The camels look totally stoned. The donkeys and burros, arguably my favourite among the hoofed mammals, had that peculiar dear sweetness I so adore. The horses were plainly pissed off and the Roman soldiers riding them were pointless and weird. But the real cake-taker was the sheep.